Has Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens Jumped the Shark?

So, last we met our familiar group of Sharknado hunters, they were mourning the death of Fin Shepard’s (Ian Ziering) wife April (Tara Reid) who after giving birth in the belly of a shark to a son named Gil, lapsed into a four-year coma. Yes, they name the fish-spawned kid Gil. On the advice of April’s father—a well-known scientist (Gary Busey), April was removed from life support and her family cremated her…or so they think.

This is the first lesson from Sharknado 4: Who the hell believes Gary Busey? I don’t care that he is playing a famous scientist who can save the world; he is still Gary Busey whose mug shot has been splattered on the cover of every newspaper and celebrity gossip rag from NY to Nepal.

Back to present: The Shepard family is moving forward from their past Sharknado traumas and is planning on attending a family reunion at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. Fin, who now lives on a ranch in Kansas, heads to Vegas with his cousin Gemini leaving Gil in the hands of his supermodel mom, Cheryl Tiegs.

From the start of the movie, the shark action is never ending. The movie begins with the opening of a new Vegas hotel called Sharknado built by Aston Reynolds (Tommy Davidson) who founded Astro-X, the company that employs the hi-tech method of neutralizing sharknados. I’m not sure why this is but this Aston guy always has two dark-haired women walking behind him in tight, tight black mini-dresses. I would say these chicks are bodyguards, but with those dresses, there is nowhere to conceal a weapon. So, I’m going with my second theory: they are the new Tony Orlando and Dawn.

At the Stratosphere, Fin’s son Matt calls from a plane where he is going to parachute into the pool area with his brand new bride Gabrielle. Before they can jump, the sandstorm sharknado sends them plummeting from the plane as it strikes the strip wiping out all the Vegas hotels. The sharks bite the heads off all the Vegas regulars from Carrot Top to Wayne Newton and lots of other stars who I hope got paid good money to be shark meat. I did admire the heroism of several Chippendale guys who valiantly fought off the biting fish by thrusting their pelvises as the sharks charged. I’m happy to report that I didn’t see one Chippendale lose his secret weapon. I could write thousands of words describing the Vegas devastation, but I will sum it up this way. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

The flying sharks head to the Grand Canyon where they destroy the Hoover Dam. Fin and his family somehow get on a train heading to Kansas but the train they are on heads right into the middle of the Hoover Dam turmoil. By this time, the sharks have destroyed oil fields in Texas which turns them into an Oilnado and when they catch fire, they become…you guessed it…a Firenado and then there is a Lightningnado and of course a Nuclearnado when the sharks hit a nuclear plant in Ohio. Fast forward again. People are dying from sharks all over the country. The Astro-X guy calls in his top science guys who happen to be David Hasselhoff (who is Fin’s father) and of course, trustworthy Gary Busey. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Gary Busey has a secret weapon all his own–his daughter April, who is not dead, but has been transformed into a robot who can fly and change her hands into chain saws or rotating blades or that light-ray wand that the guys in Star Wars have.

April escapes her father’s lab and heads into the shark infested streets to find her family.  Coincidentally as she steps into the street, a car that is caught up in the sharknado is diving toward a lost child. In true Supergirl form, April swoops down and lifts the car into the air saving the child. When she puts the car down, she realizes that David Hasselhoff and her daughter are in the car. I forgot she has a daughter too. They make their way to the family farm and Fin, who has accepted April even though she is a robot, climbs to the top rafter of the barn and removes an assault weapon arsenal that would make the NRA weep with pride. (Again, I might be out of sequence but I had a glass of white wine and got confused.)

Fast forward…the sharknado lifts the barn up into its vortex (just like the Wizard of Oz) then more blood, more sharks, more blood and somehow they wind up in Chicago where the barn slams down on the wicked witch mayor and all that is left are her striped stockings and ruby slippers sticking out from the dilapidated building.  The Shepard family makes their way to Niagara Falls where Gary Busey and the Astro-X people think they if they can reverse the Falls, they can reverse the sharknados. I didn’t get that science, but I’m a writer.

The older kids put Gil in a barrel for safety. Yea, that works out well at Niagara Falls all the time.  Then Fin takes on the Nuclearado.  But something goes awry and Gil goes over the falls and one by one the family is eaten by sharks and each of the sharks are eaten by bigger sharks until finally they are all in their individual sharks inside a whale shark which slams to the ground. Gil gets hold of a chain saw in the whale shark (yes, a five-year-old with a chain saw) and cuts all his family members out of their respective sharks. But Fin isn’t breathing so they make a defribllator out of electrically-charged sharks and shock him back to life.  The last scene shows the Eiffel Tower crashing to Earth and the family realizes the sharknado issues are not over yet. And this is where my DVR cut out, so what can we learn from Sharknado 4?  There should never, and I mean never, be a Sharknado 5.